Is Vik sure? Wyatt also thought dubiously.

Vik’s pride was pricked. Hey, I am strong like an ox or a Yuri.

Don’t worry, I’ll help hold you up, Tom, Wyatt thought.

Tom waited until Vik had anchored an arm around him, squashing him up against the neck of the Praetorian, then he hooked the other end of the neural wire into the back of his neck. The search program in his head triggered and began rapidly scanning through Obsidian Corp.’s database. Tom had a search plan of his own in mind. He jolted out of himself into the vast tangle of information sparking through Obsidian Corp.’s systems, knowing he might be able to locate the transmitter before the program did. The sooner they could leave, the better.

But Obsidian Corp. wasn’t like the Pentagonal Spire. Tom had no familiarity with the network of pipelines. He kept finding himself linking to external flows of information, feeds from the offices of congressmen straight into Vengerov’s databases . . . feeds from inside homes, buildings, from smart appliances, from intelligent streetlights. . . . He found himself in Obsidian Corp.’s external defense systems, and then he shot through a pipeline into the NSA’s Fusion Center in Utah, where the surveillance footage of every person in America was being stored. Then he snapped back into his own processor, and the search results blinked in his vision center, showing him a warehouse, empty but for machines and a supercomputer—and Yuri’s transmitter.

But something strange happened. A wind of stellar power seemed to seize him, dragging him down another pipeline. It was like disappearing down a vortex or a black hole for an instant, because the pipeline drew him irresistibly into another subsystem. For a fleeting moment, Tom’s consciousness was in the datastream, the zeroes and ones dancing in his brain, and his mind met another mind. It was that same disconcerting sensation he’d experienced finding the third neural processor interfacing with Heather’s ship.

The other neural processor seared his consciousness, and through someone else’s eyes, Tom gazed at a reflection swimming across the polished blackness of a nearby screen.

Joseph Vengerov seemed to be staring right back at him, and for a chilling moment as their minds were linked, something curious and dark and stinging with possibilities stirred on all sides of him.

“If it isn’t the ghost in the machine.” Vengerov spoke right to his own shadowy reflection. “Is that you, Yaolan?”

Tom felt a spike of panic and reeled back out of Vengerov’s mind and into himself so abruptly, he almost lurched over. But Wyatt and Vik were practically bear-hugging him to the Praetorian, squashing his cheek against the metal pole, and their thoughts began bombarding him.

Did you get the location? Vik thought.

Where’s the transmitter? Wyatt thought.

Tom straightened, bathed in sweat, anxiety a living animal clawing in his chest.